Wisdom of Rich Dad

Shelley Elmblad

Online personal finance software is very convenient because you can use it wherever there is an Internet connection. And, these free top three online personal finance software choices offer security features for your personal finance data. With online software, you never have to install anything on your hard drive and software updates are done for you on the software company’s servers.

Online Personal Finance Software Benefits

Each of the top three online personal finance titles have a different feature focus, so look them all over and visit the web sites for more details. And remember that when you use online personal finance software on a public computer, you must log out and close the browser window before leaving the computer.

How is This Personal Finance Software Free?

ClearCheckbook is completely free but accepts free-will donations. Mint and MySpendingPlan are also completely free but each gets a cut on any of the money-saving offers presented to you. The offers on Mint.com are hidden unless you click on a tab to view them. MySpendingPlan offers are more upfront and in your face.

ClearCheckbook

ClearCheckbook is free online personal finance software that is far from bare-bones free software. ClearCheckbook has many features to manage personal finances.

ClearCheckbook Features:

• See all transactions, overall balances, reminders and notices on one page in ClearCheckbook.
• Supports account transfers and split transactions.
• ClearCheckbook spending limits provide a way to create a personal budget.
• Search transactions by date, keyword, account or category.
• Track your spending in ClearCheckbook with charts, graphs and spending vs. saving for all accounts.
• Security: you do not enter your account numbers into ClearCheckbook.
• Reconcile accounts and use time-saving recurring transactions.
• Personal finance alerts and reminders arrive by email.
• Use CheckBot to update your account while on the go with AIM, ICQ, MSN / Windows Live, Google Talk and Yahoo! Messaging services.

Get ClearCheckbook free personal finance software at ClearCheckbook.com.

Mint

Mint is free online personal finance software that offers something truly different: Mint tells you how you can save money, and it has some nice automated features.

Mint Features:

• Mint automatically updates your banking and credit card transactions, eliminating the possibility of forgetting to enter transactions.
• Mint automatically categorizes transactions as they are downloaded.
• Label transactions to be able to quickly identify expenses that are related to work, hobbies, meals out, etc.
• View all banking and credit card transactions and account balances side by side.
• Mint works with 3,000 U.S. banks and credit card companies.
• Compares cash and debt for quick overall financial reporting, and Mint offers spending histories.
• Email and SMS alerts let you know about low balances, large purchases and other financial activities in your accounts.
• Security: firewalls, encryption and authentication procedures protect your personal finance data.
• Mint tells about banking and credit card deals and money-saving products and services you could benefit from using. This information is kept out of the way under the Ways to Save tab.

Get Mint free online personal finance software and learn about managing personal finances at Mint.com.

MySpendingPlan

MySpendingPlan online personal finance software has strong personal budgeting features and a focus on building savings.

MySpendingPlan Features:

• Detailed budget set-up.
• Manage budgets and spending for groups or for your household.
• Bill tracking with email reminders from MySpendingPlan.
• Set up savings goals in MySpendingPlan and track progress toward those goals.
• Shopping features include shopping planner, online shopping deals, shopping lists, savings recommendations, online and in-store coupons.
• Security: MySpendingPlan uses strong data encryption and does not require account numbers to be entered.
• Pre-made templates for standard personal budgets or for planning for large, infrequent expenses.

Get MySpendingPlan free online personal finance software and personal budgeting tips at MySpendingPlan.com.

by Robert Frank

On an episode of “Dirty Sexy Money”, ABC’s soapy drama about the filthy rich, heiress Karen Darling gets married for the fourth time, to a golf pro.

Minutes after the ceremony, she decides she wants a divorce, leaving the golfer to wonder about his $3 million guarantee in the pre-nuptial agreement.

“I still get the check, right?” he asks.

“Of course,” Ms. Darling sneers. “I made a vow.”

Marrying for money isn’t just grist for television plot lines. With the wealth boom creating unprecedented riches — and greater opportunities for gold-digging by both genders — price-tag partnerships and checkbook breakups are increasingly making headlines. Even more surprising, according to a new survey, are the going rates for today’s mercenary unions.

BEAUTY FADES

Celebrities get the most attention, of course, whether it’s Kevin Federline, the backup dancer-turned-millionaire ex of Britney Spears, or Heather Mills, Paul McCartney’s estranged second wife, who is set to receive tens of millions of dollars when her divorce is final, according to the British press.

Yet even among the workaday (or wannabe) wealthy, marrying for money has become a popular pursuit.

In an infamous personal ad posted on Craigslist this summer, a twentysomething New Yorker who described herself as “spectacularly beautiful” wrote that she was looking for a man who made at least $500,000 a year. She’d tried dating men earning $250,000, but that wasn’t “getting me to Central Park West,” she said.

The ad inspired all manner of parodies and follow-ups, including one by an investment banker, who replied that since his money would grow over time but her beauty would fade, the offer didn’t make good business sense. She was, he said, a “depreciating asset.”

To many New Yorkers, jaded by multimillion-dollar condos and wall-to-wall wealth, the salary request probably seems reasonable, maybe even low. Yet nationally, the going rate is much lower.

According to a survey by Prince & Associates, a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, the average “price” that men and women demand to marry for money these days is $1.5 million.

The survey polled 1,134 people nationwide with incomes ranging between $30,000 to $60,000 (squarely in the median range for nationwide incomes). The survey asked: “How willing are you to marry an average-looking person that you liked, if they had money?”

AGAINST LOVE

Fully two-thirds of women and half of the men said they were “very” or “extremely” willing to marry for money. The answers varied by age: Women in their 30s were the most likely to say they would marry for money (74%) while men in their 20s were the least likely (41%).

“I’m a little shocked at the numbers,” says Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who has studied marriage and money. “It’s kind of against the notion of love and soul mates and the main motivations to marry in our culture.”

Still, Ms. Smock has found in her own research that having money does encourage people to tie the knot. “It’s more likely that a couple will marry if they have money, and if the man is economically stable,” she says.

Women aren’t the only ones with the gold-digging impulse. In the Prince & Associates study, 61% of men in their 40s said they would marry for money. Ms. Smock says that as men get older, they become more comfortable with women being the bread-winners.

The matrimonial price tag varies by gender and age. Asked how much a potential spouse would need to have to be money-marriage material, women in their 20s said $2.5 million. The going rate fell to $1.1 million for women in their 30s, and rose again to $2.2 million for women in their 40s.

Ms. Smock and Russ Alan Prince, Prince & Associate’s founder, both attribute the fluctuation to the assumption that thirty-something women feel more pressure to get married than women in their 20s, so they are willing to lower the price. By their 40s, women are more comfortable being independent, so they’re willing to hold out for more cash.

Men have cheaper requirements. In the Prince survey, their asking price overall was $1.2 million, with men in their 20s asking $1 million and men in their 40s asking $1.4 million.

Douglas Freeman, a tax and estates attorney in California who works with wealthy families, says the men’s numbers are lower because they would feel threatened by women worth several million dollars. “The men aren’t going to say they want $10 million, because they wouldn’t be comfortable with a woman who’s worth so much more than they are,” he says.

Whatever the case, the prices for both men and women seem surprisingly low, given the new landscape of wealth. While $1 million or $2 million may sound like a lot to people making $30,000, it’s hardly enough to transform someone’s life or make them “rich” by contemporary billionaire standards. No one in the survey quoted a price of more than $3 million.

Of course, when the mercenary marriage proves disappointing, there’s always divorce. Among the women in their twenties who said they would marry for money, 71% said they expected to get divorced — the highest of any demographic. Only 27% of men in their 40s expected to divorce.

Says Mr. Prince: “For these women, it’s just another step on their journey to the good life. They want to be paid what they think they’re worth and then move on.”

by Katie Adams

Have you ever watched an infomercial or seen an item in a department store and thought “I could have thought of that!” Have you wished you had invested money early in a blockbuster invention? Learn the stories behind some (seemingly) ridiculous ideas that have made inventors and investors very wealthy, and find out what you, as a potential investor, should look for and consider before putting up capital for a potential funding opportunity.

The Koosh Ball

You’ve may have never heard of Scott Stillinger but somewhere in your home or office you probably have one of his inventions – the Koosh ball, which made millions of dollars. Stillinger came up with the idea for the Koosh ball when he tied rubber bands together to create a smaller, easier-to-catch ball for his young children in 1987. He founded OddzOn Products Inc. to distribute the small, simple toy, and within just 12 months it was flying off of store shelves as that year’s hottest Christmas gift.

The company expanded, and in 1994 Stillinger sold OddzOn to toy manufacturer Russ Berrie and Company Inc., which in turn was bought by toy behemoth Hasbro in 1997 for more $100 million

And it all happened a mere 10 years after the first ball was created.

Santa Mail

Every year, millions of children around the globe pen letters to Santa and hope for a response. Byron Reese realized the potential in this market. In 2002, he launched “Santa Mail,” a service that allows kids to send letters to the North Pole. Parents enclose a small fee of just $9.95, and little Johnny or Jane receives a personalized letter back from the “big man” himself. By 2009, Santa Mail had responded to nearly 300,000 children. At close to $10 a letter, well, you can do the math - needless to say, it was a little idea that has earned Reese a big return.

Lucky Break Wishbones

Are you still a little bitter that, at last year’s Thanksgiving dinner, you lost out to your cousin Ned in the annual fight over the lone turkey wishbone? Well, thanks to Ken Ahroni, those days are long over. In 1999, he had something of an epiphany at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner table: a family with multiple people would like multiple wishbones. He shuttered his previous consulting business and launched Lucky Break Wishbone Corp. in 2004, in order to sell his one-of-a-kind breakable plastic wishbones. Within two years, the company was generating nearly $1 million in sales through distributors in more than 40 states nationwide.

Antenna Balls

You’ve seen them; maybe you even sport one on your car. Those ubiquitous, yellow smiley-faced balls perched atop antennas in parking lots nationwide have made Jason Wall a very wealthy man. Inspired in 1997 by a commercial for the fast food chain Jack in the Box, Wall created some antenna ball designs and began selling them locally through auto stores in California in 1998. Within a year, he had earned more than $1.15 million in sales and quickly won major accounts to sell his product through national chains, including Wal-Mart. In 2009, the multimillionaire is president and CEO of In-Concept Inc.

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The RICH DAD’s apprentice help me to reveal myself, soon I realized that I am just another POOR DAD in this world.

My head non-stopping thinking about it.

RICH DAD - I must become rich & wealthy because I have a family & children to take care.

POOR DAD - I cannot become rich & wealthy because I have a family & children to take care.

So different the way of thinking.

I still can remember the below from the well-known speaker told us,

1. People should do what they love to do
2. However, most people end up never do what they love to do

The above 2 sentences are contradiction each others, if people know they should do what they love to do but why still end up doing something else.
Why people end up never doing what they love to do?

You must have a lot of excuses or reason to justify it. So do I.

- Dare not take risk
- People do not get what they want due to they do not know what they want in the first place.
- Fear
- People are complacent, do not want to get in trouble in the something new
- Opportunity not there

The reason that people do not end up doing what they want to do is because whatever they are doing now is just too comfortable, it is not great, not fantastic, not they really want but still go to work. Sometimes, they may even hate the job, or the company, or even hate the boss but they still go to work.

It is interesting to know people spend their time & effort doing something they really do not like to do but just because they are just too comfortable, not many changes, - Comfort Zone.

Don’t you think is interesting? Think about that.

Definition of Word “Wealth”
Big car? Big house? Possession on oneself? How much he spent? Did you realize that a lot of people have big car big house but also with big loan.

Wealth
Number of day forward you can survive/ maintain your lifestyle if you stop work – forever/ infinity

Which mean if you don’t want to go to work tomorrow, you never ever have to worry a day about the rest of your life because somehow somewhere there will be an income/ money coming to you and you will be taken care of. Isn’t that wonderful?

That’s the stage we are looking for. Financial Independent or Retirement
Retirement normally happen in age of 55/60/65 years. What you can do at age of retirement? Nothing much.

Will it be nice if you can retire in much younger age so called Financial Independent?
You wake up and have a choice to choose whether want to go to work or no. Once you have the choice you have the freedom & vice versa.

The fact is most people don’t have that freedom.

People need to go out there to make ‘MMM’ money making machine. MMM is a machine that you spend some time, effort & resources to create.

It is possible to make your own money making machine. But most of the Malaysia spend their time, money & effort to turn themselves to a money making machine to a company. Too busy in the work, no time for create your own MMM is a killer.

Become a MMM and create a MMM is very different. You might want to write down “how many days you can survive if stop work today?’ The ultimate goal is to increase the number of days.

In nowadays, making money is very easy. The only thing you need to do is working very hard. If you work hard enough sure you will make money, but create wealth is not about working hard is about working smart.

There is thousand of people out-there working very very hard everyday but never found financial independent. Working hard is not the answer for the wealth. Working hard on the right financial strategy then is the way to create wealth. Think about it. But where to start & how?

How come a highly educated people or highly professional sometime do not want to follow good suggestion? Because they think they know it already. Creating wealth also not depending on how high your education is. Our education never teach you about money or creating wealth, the teacher teach you how to become a great MMM (employee) to company.

If teacher teach you about money, I am more worry about that. Because most of the teacher are not wealthy.

About 70% of the population stop work today cannot survive more than 60 days.  I start to think more in-dept about the issue now.

~ Darrell Tan

Robert Kiyosaki mentioned in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” that assets put money into your pocket while liabilities take money out of your pocket.

It was with this in mind that I started to acquire more of these assets (e.g. stocks) instead of frivolous stuff like clothes, accessories, electronic devices and stuff.

These stocks I own have been paying me quarterly and yearly dividends. Thus, they have been putting money into my pocket over the years.

However, two stocks that I have recently declared “rights’ issue. For the uninitiated, that basically means that the company is issuing me with more shares and I have to pay for them if I intend to exercise my “rights” or either forfeit them and see my shareholdings in the company diluted.

What an irony. These assets are now taking money out of my pocket! All the dividends that I have earned from them are like useless.

If they are so cash strapped, why did they even declare dividends in the first place over the years?

Didn’t they foresee this coming? Why weren’t they more prudent in calculating the amount of dividends that they were giving out over the years?

So now instead of owning assets, I am like owning two businesses which are asking me to pump in more money into them. I can’t tell whether these are assets or liabilities just yet.

*Big Sigh*

It’s a late weekday afternoon and best-selling author Sharon Lechter is once again giving financial advice.

Today, her target audience is quite different from the adults who purchased the “Rich Dad Poor Dad” books she co-authored with fellow Valley resident Robert Kiyosaki.

This group consists of a half-dozen young teenagers at a Phoenix branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs, and the audience is one Lechter hopes to appeal to with YOUTHpreneur, part of her new business that teaches children how to be entrepreneurs.

“I have a passion for financial literacy for families and children,” said Lechter, who left the Rich Dad Company in 2007 after disagreements with Kiyosaki and now runs Pay Your Family First. “What is happening with today’s kids is they don’t understand delayed gratification. . . . Kids want it before they even think about working for it.”

Lechter’s focus on children comes at a time when national studies show high-school and college students are plunging themselves into deep credit-card debt and having easier access to credit. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama last week threw his support behind a consumer-friendly credit-card law that eliminates tricky fine print, sudden rate increases and late fees.

The YOUTHpreneur program teaches children how to make money through gumball sales, and she’s teamed with local branches of the Boys & Girls Clubs and Fry’s Food Stores. Through the program, children learn about sales and profits by operating a candy machine at a Fry’s store.

“It was a good experience. We learned about business,” said Michael Clark, a 14-year-old from Greenway Middle School in Phoenix. “We had fun doing it, and we made some money for the Boys & Girls Club. So, it was all good.”

Lechter, of Paradise Valley, has taught the YOUTHpreneur program to about 70 children at six different Boys & Girls Clubs branches during the past year, and she’s selling the program on her Web site, youthpreneur.net.

She said working with kids brought her career full circle as the certified public accountant began focusing on financial education when her oldest son, Phillip, went off to college.

She said she thought she had taught her son to manage money, but as a freshman at Arizona State University, he quickly dug himself into a $2,500 credit-card debt.

“I was so upset, but I was more angry at myself than him,” Lechter said. “We didn’t bail him out. It took him about five years to get himself on track.”

The lesson apparently stuck because Phillip Lechter now is president of her new company, and he said the business would focus on entrepreneurship, financial education and money tips for teens and parents.

Sharon Lechter said it’s important for parents to teach their kids about financial management because college students are racking up thousands of dollars of credit-card debt and even some high-school students are using credit cards.

Sallie Mae Inc., which manages student loans, released a study this month that said nearly one-third of college students put tuition on their credit cards and the average balance for a student was $3,173.

College seniors are graduating with an average credit-card debt of $4,100, up from about $2,900 in 2004, according to the study. The median credit-card debt for freshmen nearly tripled to $939 since 2004.

Meanwhile, a 2008 nationwide survey of high-school students by Jump$tart, a financial literacy organization, found that nearly 35 percent of students had a credit card, up slightly from the nearly 32 percent in 2002.

Steve Beekman, area director for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Phoenix, said Lechter provided important skills to the children. He said a donor provided the gumballs and machines, while the children, who were between 11 and 15, donated the few hundred dollars in profits back to the Boys & Girls Clubs.

“It has gotten them exposed on how to run a business, and it has opened their eyes to the real world in how to make money and not go out and spend it all,” Beekman said.

Along with running YOUTHpreneur, Lechter also has co-authored “Three Feet From Gold,” which interviews successful entrepreneurs like the founders of Chick-fil-A restaurant and Mrs. Fields Cookies.

She said the book, a partnership with the Napoleon Hill Foundation, is scheduled to be released in October.